Posts Tagged ‘Game Audio Production’

I recently read a very interesting article written by composer Bear McCreary about how he used musical genres and themes to score SOCOM 4. Essentially, the game has three main factions that he chose to represent with their own type (or genre) of music: traditional eastern music, western orchestral music, and electronic music. I found this to be inspiring, especially since I have been considering using a similar approach to writing the music for a future project of mine.

Back in January, I attended Global Game Jam 2011 which was hosted at Cogswell College. The event divided participants into teams that would each go on to create their own game in under 48 hours. My team (made up entirely of Cogswell freshmen and one senior) produced a game about a planet-devouring cat called I Can Has Your Planet? While I helped plan some of the overall game design aspects, my primary role was creating and delivering audio assets.

I’ve been listening to music in video games for over 20 years and have been an enthusiast all the way. I cherish everything from humming the catchy tunes of Mega Man 2 & 3 as I played as a child, to recording Secret of Mana’s score on cassette tape, to buying my first OST directly from Japan. However, I’ve noticed a distressing trend in recent years: Music is becoming more subdued, soulless, and sometimes silenced altogether. This often plays out as an imitation of cinema (no offense to film scores). I can think of multiple game series where early installments had excellent music, and recent entries had “appropriate” yet forgettable scores. How could this happen?